Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 25. (Budapest, 2007)

Piroska ÁCS: Kálmán Györgyi (1860-1930), Heart and Soul of the National Hungarian Applied Arts Association

definite plan) a number of young applied artists and would-be teachers of drawing to different parts of the country in order to capture in sketches and paintings the more valuable creations of Hungarian folk art, namely traditional buildings, stoves, gateways, embroideries, woodcarvings, and costumes. In this way, the Association amassed some 1600 drawings, handing over this priceless collection to the Hungarian National Museum’s Department of Ethnography after the First World War. It likewise made over a part of its folk art collection as well, with a series containing 160 highly valuable works passing to the Museum of Applied Arts, to fill gaps in that institution’s incomplete Hungarian collection.24 The remaining material - approximately 3000 artefacts (primarily folk and so-called aristocratic embroidery with some ceramic and carved wooden pieces) - later went partly to the Museum of Applied Arts and partly to the Museum of Ethnography.25

From 1909, Kálmán Györgyi performed extra activity in the Guild of St. George, an association of Hungarian art lovers and art collectors of which he was a founding member.26 This rapid development was brought to a halt by the four years of the First World War and by the blow to the Hungarian nation which then followed. As a result of political events and economic collapse, the cultural life of the country was paralysed. Recovery required great efforts. ‘This work was more difficult than the pioneering work at the outset. At that time, they had looked to the work of the future with great hopes, joy, and enthusiasm. Now, however, in a state of grief and lethargy and without any outside help, they had to continue the work in the ruins of the great collapse. But this work he [Kálmán Györgyi] performed with staunch and fanatical faith, without the essentials and in the saddest conditions imaginable, in an unheated room and with frozen fingers. And if these years did not show results as conspicuous as the world expositions that had ended in great success, nevertheless in these sorrowful years the foundation-laying work did yield results, although seeming to be small. This difficult labour lasted for many years under the national curse of the Trianon treaty; we were happy at the modest results of a few inland exhibitions, because we felt that this material, collected together with difficulty, would in the future again exert as great an impact as the first applied arts artefacts in the first years after the foundation.’27 And, as a matter of fact, successes at the international expositions at Monza in 1923, 1925 and 1927, at Philadelphia in 1926 and at Barcelona in 1929 did signal the revival of Hungarian applied arts.

In these trying circumstances, Kálmán Györgyi still found the energy to re-enliven a movement which seemed to be of lesser importance but which was close to his heart. In 1908, a society came into existence whose aim was to encourage flowers on public and private buildings in the capital, and which adopted the name ‘Budapest Flower Committee’. The city authorities were persuaded to announce a competition and thereby reward the most beautiful embellishments. These they wished to honour by awarding gold, silver and bronze plaquettes designed especially for the purpose by Odon Moiret. The idea became extremely popular in the short space of time, but the movement, which began so well, was hindered by historical events. The time for the revival of the movement, which had long been inactive, came in 1929, when Professor Vilmos Manninger became its president and Kálmán Györgyi its vice president. Their goal was the extension of the enterprise, under the name ‘Flowers for Budapest - Flowers for Hungary’.

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